Choose: the rest is in the details
by Lens of Sanity
Summary: I've heard good things about Evil, and after I made my choice I've gotta tell you, it feels good, very good.
1. The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

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"_This story is dedicated to my enemies. Your absence leaves the world a bleaker place and I miss you all so much" – Lens of Sanity_

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Choose: the rest is in the details  
>by Lens of Sanity<p>

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Chapter One: The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

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Landing heavily in an undignified heap, the familiar disorientation of Portkey travel began to ebb slowly away from the black haired boy, as he lay crumpled on the mossy ground. There was something intrinsically wrong with magical forms of transportation, beyond that of a broom he simply could not get the hang of them at all. Under normal circumstances it would be fine, but this evening the boy felt a lack of dignity washing his actions, making them seem amateurish in the extreme.

From the deck the fourteen year old, offered the overly mundane name of 'Harry Potter' by his long deceased parents, raised his hand and whispered a quiet word. A big red bar of magic jumped from his thin stick of holly, and another boy dropped to the floor without any fuss whatsoever. Harry suppressed a groan and warily got to his feet, eager to be on with his evening.

Harry allowed himself a moment to stare down at the prone form of a sixth year Hufflepuff boy by the name of Cedric Diggory, before taking the time to sweep glance about his surroundings. Truly he was in the gloomiest of places, eerily lit by the fading sunlight of early evening, the moss covered tombstones and weather worn monoliths of the cemetery were certainly lacking in the sense of grandeur he had been expecting.

A bare handful of seconds passed before the boy became aware of a careworn, pudgy man he knew to be named Peter Pettigrew, or Mr. Wormtail as his onetime friends would have titled him. Harry did not have the time necessary to think back upon all the choices made leading, all but inevitably to this meeting. Nevertheless a fleeting sense of nostalgia broke over him as it became apparent in an instant, this scene would most assuredly have been unrecognisable, had certain things come to pass in a bare fraction of altered ways.

Once again Harry's arm came to bear, with weapon in hand, pointed directly at the oncoming man's chest. He thought back to days not too long ago, hiding out from his relatives in the luxury suite he'd been gifted with for those ten sweet years, under nigh smothering care, pleasant days with family who always made time for their dear adopted son.

Ha.

Perhaps not so much.

Harry cast his mind back to brutally being woken by the thump of his morbidly obese cousin's weight as it slammed into the stair, the one which acted as ceiling, directly above his slumbering head. And the memory, as always, of his forehead meeting the cross beam. A swift jolt of pain was such an enjoyable way to start the day after all.

A scant instant had passed since the unkempt, pudgy man had been noticed by the boy, and all the warmth he felt for that beloved cross beam poured itself through his magic, along with six choppy little syllables; _Avada Kedavra_, the two words had such a satisfyingly angular sound to them.

Briefly Mr. Wormtail's eyes did show a flash of surprise the instant before they glazed over in death, and his body fell unceremoniously to the floor, unmoving and useless.

As the bundle in Pettigrew's arms tumbled to the unforgiving ground, Harry's scar burst in purest agony. Bloody buggering hell, but he hated that so very much, and swimming in the torturous haze Harry forced himself back to his feet, double checking his cocky and self assured grin as his did so. Staggering over to the small, gnarled body, Harry prodded the hideous thing with one steel toe capped boot.

"Looking good there, Tom ma boy," Harry informed him cheerfully. It took tremendous effort to ignore the blood streaming into his eyes, and the all consuming pain which was doubtlessly popping brain cells.

"Potter, I will kill you and all those you care about!" Hideous baby Voldemort squeaked pathetically from the floor.

"Well that is not very peaceable of you now is it Tommy?" Harry said. Getting down on his haunches the fourteen year old continued. "And here I am, capable of destroying that little thing you're wearing with noting but the touch of my fingertips."

Harry brushed the cowl from around the withered and scarred head, gods but the thing was disgusting to look at, even when Harry was being careful not to touch it.

The menace and rage the Dark Lord was feeling wrenched upwards a few notches in both pain and intensity, but Harry slammed his eyes closed and fought it off.

"Lord Voldemort," Harry began, voice changing to slow, serious, and most of all _precise_ tones "I believe it is time we talked."

* * *

><p><em>I wonder where it all changed. Heh, no I don't, at least not really.<em>

_How about it Black? Raise a glass, for all the times we never had…_

_Cheers._

* * *

><p>The tiny grizzled body Voldemort inhabited looked thoughtful, maybe. It was quite difficult to guess the facial expression of such a twisted horror, but the agony running through Harry's forehead seemed to lessen slightly and he got the distinct impression of thoughtfulness, an otherworldly sense of understanding owing to close proximity with the Dark Lord.<p>

"Talk?" Voldemort half stated, "You wish to talk?"

"Of course," Harry said, holding fast to the cocky grin. The fourteen year old took a few moments to prop the baby Voldemort against one of the gravestones, marked with the name 'Charles Pikal,' a Muggle man who had died in 1972 at the age of 37 apparently. "You once told my former Professor, Quirinus Quirrell, that there was no good and evil only power, do you remember?"

He got the distinct impression Voldemort was gazing deeply into him from across the clearing, it was an uncomfortable sensation similar to being around Snape for any length of time, yet Harry did his best to ignore the feeling as anything less than confidence would likely get him killed.

There was an extended moment in which the Dark Lord was presumably in deep contemplation. "Interesting," He spoke after a time. "Yes I do remember, I also remember you spurning my offer of an honoured place at my side."

"I'm afraid I want a little bit more than a simple _'honoured place'_ Tom," Harry said, ignoring the stab of agony released on voicing the man's Muggle name. Seeing the tiny Dark Lord was about to protest Harry interrupted, "It's your name idiot, get over it… Anyway, I am totally open to performing a little ritual of Bone and Blood and Flesh, but I want something in return."

"Young Crouch," Voldemort stated his conclusion. "You got to young Crouch."

"Erm," Harry began uncertainly. "Yeah, I had a bit of a conversation with him last night, so I know of the ritual…"

"I am aware of that." He responded dryly.

"How can you possibly be-"

"Lord Voldemort always knows."

Harry was about to make some disparaging comment or other about this claim, but seemed to think better of it. "Fine, you always know. Whatever."

"So what is it you do desire Harry Potter?" Voldemort asked. The ritual he intended to complete this evening had a little leeway, but they could not dawdle too long and still hope for success.

"I am not content to simply be another one of your senseless followers," Harry began. "I need to learn magic, proper magic, and it seems to me having a powerful and talented Death Eater would be more useful to you than a weak and useless one."

The Dark Lord over mused this claim, "Why precisely do you wish to learn? What is your primary goal?"

Harry smirked, "I want to kill Dumbledore, and you alone can train me in the magic I will need to know, otherwise I'll never stand a chance."

Harry said this looking the most feared individual in the world directly in the eye.

"You truly wish to kill Dumbledore?"

"Yes," he confirmed. "Thought that might be down your particular alley Voldemort, groovy or what?"

* * *

><p>"<em>It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends."<em>

_Too right Dumbledore, if nothing else I've got your back on that one._

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><p>"Do you have any advice?" Harry asked, carefully levitating the bundled figure, wand pointed and intent focused.<p>

"You claimed to already know of the ritual," Voldemort's absent response came sibilantly.

"Yeah, I know the three ingredients, and the words I'm supposed to use, but I've never done one of these dark rituals before. It makes sense to ask someone who's experienced in this sort of thing"

"Ritual magic is incredibly conducive to one's ends, efficacious even," the Dark Lord informed him. "Correctly performing one can be surprisingly straightforward, and is virtually always lacking in any kinds of pyrotechnics ignorants often assume should accompany the magic."

Harry thought this through for a while as he carefully moved over to the huge cauldron, see he was learning stuff already, doing this was obviously a marvellous idea.

"So I plop you in and just get on with it?" Harry would swear he felt the Dark Lord rolling his eyes. "Fine, but if it doesn't work you can't whinge on that I didn't ask first."

Approaching the cauldron Harry took it off 'simmer,' and waited a short minute in silence, the liquid heating very fast, its surface not only bubbling but beginning to shoot out fiery sparks in all directions. Eventually the mist and sparks coalesced into a bed of fluid diamonds, resting atop the sharply glowing potion.

"What happened to the lack of pyrotechnics?" Harry muttered. "The thing looks pretty cool to me."

"Put me in and get on with it," Lord Voldemort commanded.

"Promise me again," Harry retorted.

"I will Mark you as soon as the ritual is complete, and have you trained enough to kill Albus Dumbledore."

"Marvellous Tom," Harry smiled, "I see this as the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Locking with the crimson eyes of the scarred and bald headed baby-abomination, he nodded before proceeding to dump the thing into the glittering, diamond-like solution. Harry skipped lightly over to Mr. Wormtail's corpse, humming the song 'Common People' as he did so. Myron Wagtail having agreed to send him a pre-release copy back during the Yule Ball, and leaving Harry unable to get the tune out of his head.

Hefting a long bone about a foot and a half long, Harry inspected what was certainly Tom Riddle Senior's femur, with an undisguised interested. Clearing his throat he began to enunciate his lines. "Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son."

The potion turned blue, but as that was probably supposed to happen, Harry simply raised the excessively ornate silver dagger to the smallest finger on his right hand. "Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your master."

Yeah, that hurt like fucking crap. The blade with its edge clearly sharpened to an unnatural keenness, sliced through his little finger effortlessly, only it caused Harry to viciously bite down on his tongue to keep from screaming out. Also, he strongly disliked the whole 'Master' comment, he'd have to do something about that, maybe Voldemort would let him use 'Chief' as a form or address.

It would be worth asking, Harry decided, right as he took note of the burning red colour to which the potion had changed.

Still humming a few bars of the annoyingly catchy song, Harry moved back toward the sixth year he'd stunned earlier. Two sets of _Incarcerous_ ropes just to be sure, made certain the boy would not be able to escape, and Harry sent as weak an _Ennervate_ as he could, barely waking the Hufflepuff.

"'Sup Cedric?" Harry asked brightly.

"H-Harry?" He answered blearily. "What, where am I-"

"Never mind that," Harry cut in. "Your Mum was a Death Eater during the last war wasn't she?"

"WHAT? No!" Diggory swore. "We would never join He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

"Good to know," Harry muttered, stabbing him in the arm with the same ornate dagger, collecting his blood on the tip. Sauntering over to the gigantic cauldron and the bright red potion, Harry enunciated his final line, "Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe."

There was wind, a brilliantly bright white light, and a bunch of other effects which Harry decided were quite impressive. At that instant he concluded this ritual must not be a very powerful one, if what Voldemort had said was true, the more efficacious rituals probably wouldn't look anything like this. At the end of everything, standing seven feet tall if he was an inch, Lord Voldemort was knee deep in the remnants of his rebirth potion, fully alive once again.

* * *

><p><em>Honestly, sometimes I've just got to admit it to myself, best laid plans and good intensions aside…<em>

_Fuck it. You want the truth?_

_I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, and well, gotta say, I'm loving every minute of it._

* * *

><p>"<em>Crucio"<em>

"Gyah!" Harry's screams tore his throat as wave after wave of agony wracked his body, driving all vestiges of sensibility from his mind.

The gap between one moment and the next, bare fractions of a second, the gulf of infinity spread wide across all creation, and the pain, the agony just kept mounting. Torturous misery cascading and building upon the pain of previous eternity, Voldemort was not letting up, and had Harry been capable of thought he would have probably spared some effort worrying about ending up with the Longbottoms, safe and sound in St. Mungo's, happily in blissfully insanity.

The twang of adrenaline rushing through his veins signified he'd likely just been _Ennervated_, yet Harry didn't dare open his eyes. Gods damn it to hell but he was hurting, every joint and muscle, under his fingernails, a pounding head, and even the blood thumping through the capillaries of his eyes, all of it screamed in protest, objecting the shear impossibility of such suffering.

Spitting out a gob of coppery saliva Harry managed to find his voice, raw and croaky though it was, sounding damaged even to his own battered ears.

"Grumpy in the mornings eh Riddle."

"_Crucio."_

Yeah, saying that was probably a mistake. Nevertheless, ten thousand years of pain and suffering later, Harry was prone on the ground, sightlessly looking up at the sky. Nine fingers remaining and body wracked with the aftershocks of brutal Cruciatus exposure, Harry raised his bare left arm toward the corpse-like, seven foot figure of Lord Voldemort.

He paid particular attention, through the haze of sweat and pain, toward the hissing sounds of Parseltongue as the magic of the Dark Mark knitted together with his arm's pale flesh. Harry didn't understand exactly what was being said, nor how the magic was working, but all the details he could hold were forced into his memory for later inspection.

The process didn't exactly hurt, uncomfortable maybe but not painful, like ants crawling across your naked body, or perhaps the sensation was what it felt like to be an expensive piece of parchment when it was crunched up into a ball and thrown into a wastepaper basket. A scant few seconds of discomfort and a sexy black tattoo shone brightly on his left arm, midnight skull with the tongue of a coiled snake. Harry didn't speak as the other Death Eaters were summoned and he was slowly allowed back to his feet.

"How about '_Chief_' that's a cool nickname right?"

"_Crucio."_

Harry rolled and dove behind a tombstone, avoiding a third Cruciatus Curse by a mere fraction of an inch. The marble headstone he was crouched behind vanished in a cloud of dust and grit, Harry found himself banished viciously across the cemetery, impacting after a long flight on a weathered old mausoleum. Pushing himself to his feet with the four fingered hand, Harry was about to open his mouth with another irreverent comment, when that inevitable third curse hit him squarely in the chest.

Damn it.

"Harry, Harry. I must say, you can take a beating better than any man I have ever known," Voldemort seemed to be allowing his tone to slide from rage to amusement in spite of himself.

"Well…" he began, coughing up another gobbet of spit and blood, "my cousin will be delighted to hear your praise Tom." Seeing the Dark Lord about to force correction once again Harry waved him off, "Later, I need to tell you about the Riddle Diary."

Voldemort's eyes widened in recognition right as the Death Eaters began Apparating into the graveyard, one at a time, summoned as they had been by Harry's new Mark.

"What took you all so long you worthless fucks?" Harry demanded, standing tall, paying no heed to the twitching pain still thumping through his body from time to time. Again catching the Dark Lord's lips quirking in amusement Harry continued, "I swear to hell, you guys dawdle like that again and I'll kill each and every one of you before Big V can get anywhere near you."

"Harry," Voldemort interrupted.

"Present."

"I do not think you truly understand what it means to be a Death Eater."

"I don't?" Harry asked in confusion.

"You cannot go around giving nicknames to Lord Voldemort."

The teenager thought this over for a little while. "But if I'm scarier, more loyal, and have superior usefulness compared to the other Death Eaters, don't I get a little leeway?"

"_Crucio."_ 'I guess that's a no, and fucking hell, _four_ torture curses, not a good sign.' "I still think Big V has a certain style about it though," Harry muttered, mostly under his breath. When Voldemort was about to curse him again Harry interrupted, "Can I at least kill Lucy Malfoy?"

Watching this byplay the summoned Death Eaters clearly did not know what to think, attempting to stand at attention, obviously forcing themselves not to shuffle nor ask questions. Of the Inner Circle present, the robed figure who was almost certainly Lucius Malfoy looked by far the least comfortable, what with the casual request for his murder bandied about as if it were everyday.

"Is there any particular reason you wish to harm Lord Malfoy Harry?" Voldemort asked with interest, "or is it simply to do with your schoolyard rivalry toward his son I seem to remember took up a vast quantity of your time."

"Nar, Draco is an idiot," the newest Death Eater replied. "Lucy set into motion events which forced me to stab Salazar Slytherin's Basilisk two years ago. I just really want to kill him for making me do that."

The implication of this statement was clearly not lost on Voldemort, with Harry correctly guessing the Diary had some personal importance, and that the Dark Lord would not be happy at the use to which the elder Malfoy put the object.

Wasting no time Voldemort proceeded to turn to the member of his Inner Circle in question, he didn't say anything, just looked at the masked man for the longest time. Harry got the strange impression that some kind of magic or other was being utilised, even if he had no idea what, the limits of which admittedly being far from the fourteen year old's grasp.

"Interesting," Voldemort hissed to himself.

"So can I kill him?" Harry asked again.

* * *

><p>"<em>I would remind you that it is not prudent to appear less than fond of Harry Potter, not when most of our kind regard him as the hero who made the Dark Lord disappear."<em>

_About the only thing Lucius ever said which was worth hearing if you ask me._

* * *

><p>The aristocratic man did not appear fond of glib remarks, nor did he take a curse with anything approaching Harry's poise. Unfortunately the twitching and freshly tortured man was quite alive as he returned to the ranks of Death Eaters crowding in a half circle, under the boughs of a mighty yew tree. Harry honestly couldn't quite believe the snivelling subservience shown by these powerful dark wizards, all bowing and declarations of eternal loyalty, nevermind the reflexively enthusiastic use of the honorific 'Master.'<p>

Leaning slouched against the gnarled bark of the yew tree, Harry watched in a contemplative silence, as Voldemort talked and declaimed to his servants. It had been thirteen years since any of them had seen him and the Dark Lord appeared keen to let them know he was displeased, some were Cruciated absently, most begged, and a few idiots even tried to make excuses for their actions.

Avery was a man of above average build, easily forgettable in appearance, and if his ridiculous attempt at getting his Master to forgive him was anything to go by, he wasn't firing on all that many cylinders either. When the man was allowed to retake his place, after being informed he owed thirteen years of loyalty for all the time spent 'disloyal' thanks to Voldemort's incorporeal state, the Dark Lord finally got around to formally addressing Harry.

"So my friends," Voldemort began, "I trust I will not need to introduce the newest member of our family?" There followed a little shuffling but none of the Death Eaters dared speak. "How would you like to share your tale with us Harry? We would all be interested in hearing how you came to be here this glorious day."

"I admit to having a minor disagreement with a Mister Bartemius Crouch," Harry told them with a small smile. "The bastard Obliviated me seven times this year. _Seven_!"

In a piece of outstandingly dramatic timing a one-legged man with a huge, crazily spinning magical eye, Apparated into the darkened clearing. Several wands came up, a curse on a number of people's lips, and Harry barked, "Stand down you fools. He is with me."

Surprising even themselves the Death Eaters obeyed this command without thought, only catching on to what they'd done after the fact. The scarred face of Alastor Moody clunked his way toward the green eyed teenager and stood to attention. "He got away," was the man's only comment.

"It seems my secondary plan failed Voldemort, more's the pity I suppose," Harry stated to their leader. "Highmaster Karkaroff appears to have escaped."

"Hmm," Voldemort swept toward the grizzled Auror, with a few swished and absolutely no incantations, a buzzing of invisible magic poured out of his long pale wand, spiderlike fingers deftly keeping the stick in motion. "Weak," he commented. "Your curse would have held for little more than a day."

"It was the first time I've done it on a human being, give me a break," Harry groused. Alastor Moody's face and body rippled and flowed, contorting and changing until a much younger man was standing, looming over a fallen wooden leg and a sightless neon blue eye. _"Expelliarmus,"_ Harry shouted as Crouch's eyes narrowed in fury and he began to raise his wand to attack.

"You put me under the Imperius boy," the now wandless Crouch growled.

"So I did, and you failed to capture Karkaroff so we're even."

"What in the name of Merlin's balls is going on?" That idiot Avery exploded in confusion. Everyone in the graveyard looked at him and he seemed to deflate under the combined stares. Eventually Voldemort waved for him to spell it out for the group.

"Short version," Harry began in a carrying voice. "Barty was under orders to get me into the Tri-Wizard Tournament. He Obliviated me a bunch of times over the course of the year when I kept figuring out he wasn't really Mad-Eye Moody, but because I'm such a badass the Memory Charms didn't all hold. I overpowered him and smacked him with an Imperius Curse last night. After a fun little interrogation where I found out about today's ritual, I ordered him to capture the Durmstrang Highmaster. And as he is an incompetent he predictably failed. I'll bet you anything the real Moody is still alive as well."

Harry glared at the blonde man who eventually spat, "Yes the old man is still alive. He had to be for the Polyjuice to continue working."

"Excuses, excuses," Harry responded with a carrying whisper, causing the Dark Lord to laugh at the byplay. "Admit it, I did pretty well…"

"That you did Harry." Voldemort began.

"…Sort of like a younger, prettier version of yourself maybe?" He interrupted the praise.

"_Crucio."_

Yeah, interrupting the Dark Lord was probably a mistake, he'd have to try and remember that in the future.

* * *

><p>"<em>There is no good an evil there is only power and those too weak to seek it," one told me.<em>

"_The truth, it is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution," the other informed._

_Well maybe I could give a yes to one of those, but I have nothing save contempt for the other._

* * *

><p>Harry woke the following day embraced by sheets of black satin. After the initial incomprehension which accompanies any return to consciousness in an unfamiliar environment, he came to one conclusion, all consuming in both its clarity and magnitude.<p>

Being evil rocked.

If someone had told him years ago that all he had to do to wake every morning surrounded by black satin bed sheets atop a goose down pillows, was become evil, he'd have done it so very long ago it would be laughable. 'Hey Harry, you get to stab your cousin and wake every morning on a huge feathered mattress. Are you down with that, even at six years old?' His imagination self asked his fictional younger self. 'Sounds like a plan to me,' his fantasy six year old counterpart responded with a terrifying smile.

A second implication struck him and Harry was forced to bark a loud laugh, alone as he was in the cavernous, opulent room. He was sleeping in Lord Malfoy's private bedchamber, and that was just too funny, it was only a shame he wasn't in bed with Lord Malfoy's wife because that would have really completed the image to perfection.

You know it was strange, back when he realised in which direction his life was going, what he would inevitably do in that graveyard, he'd half convinced himself there would be some kind of _evil hangover_ the day after. As though he'd come to his senses after all the excitement was over, and suddenly decide to plan and scheme his way out of the current mess. Gods but he'd been stupid.

"I should have gone evil years ago," Harry spoke aloud, in a tone laced with wonder, smoothly getting out of bed as he did so.

He padded naked and barefoot across the large room, starkers because Harry firmly believed all evil people slept naked, and he found what he was looking for. Shrugging comfortably into an emerald green dressing gown also made of finest satin, Malfoy family crest embossed on the breast as well as across the shoulders, he strolled out of the room. Today was going to be a good day, he could feel it, deep in his mercenary soul.

"Is there a shower around here Narcissa?" He asked, coming across a woman of patrician beauty who reminded Harry of the Ravenclaw girl he'd taken to the Yule Ball, although this woman was blonde rather than sporting the Ravenclaw's locks of darkest brown. Mrs. Malfoy's chin raised half an inch and she put on an expression which clearly implied she was conversing with scum, unwashed scum at that. "Hey now, it's not my fault the Dark Lord has a twisted sense of humour, and I was even being polite even though I don't need to be."

Narcissa held the imperious glare for a few seconds longer, probably due to the insulting attire Harry was wearing, before pointing down one corridor. "That way," the woman said shortly, spinning around and speaking no further. If being evil got you a rear three quarter like _that_, he was more convinced he'd made the correct decision than ever.

About an hour later Harry strode into the main room Voldemort had seized as his own, new robes flowing about his shoulders, all the clothes he'd been wearing for the Third Task having apparently been burnt, save his angular steel toe capped boots. Vacillating between awaiting the Dark Lord's pleasure with stoicism, and interrupting the man's silence, the decision was taken from Harry as the red eyed gaze turned directly to him, causing that uncomfortable Snapeish feeling once more.

"You will be leading a team in seven days," Voldemort told him after a time.

"Okay," he responded nonplussed. "I thought you were going to teach me some curses though?"

"If you believed that you are a fool." Harry couldn't help a frown but didn't interrupt which was probably for the best. "You are a child with precious little magical training. If you wish to learn such petty magic, consult a library or ask one of the other Death Eaters. In fact, I will ensure a copy of my old training manual is sent for your perusal, and will expect to see swift progress on your own."

"So if you are not going to teach me spells, what are you going to teach me?" Harry asked respectfully, this was precisely what he was here for after all.

"Magic."

"Of course," he replied to this vague answer.

"Tell me, do you have any skills or magical traits?"

"I am a Parselmouth like you, although you probably knew that already," Harry said. "Last year I learned I have a touch of the metamorphmagus trait, but I can only lengthen my hair and doing it takes tremendous concentration. Other than that, my best subject was Defence because I seem to have a natural _'feel'_ for spells, and can pick them up quickly."

"Your Imperius was pathetic, but we shall get to that," Voldemort told him when it became clear Harry had done talking. "James Potter was an Animage if memory serves."

"It is possible I am too, but I've never had the opportunity to check," Harry said this with enthusiasm. He'd wanted to be an Animagus ever since his third year Professor had told him the story of his own Hogwarts days.

"Do so," Harry heard this as the command it was, and barely managed to catch himself from asking something stupid like 'how.' It was obvious that most of his learning would be done on his own time and under his own steam, so figuring out how to check if he was an Animagus was now a much higher priority.

"Your presence among the Death Eaters is to be kept secret for the time being," Voldemort told him. "Only the members of the Inner Circle who joined us last night and a handful of others are to know. You are not to alert Lucius' boy to your status, nor any of the recruits. Severus has similarly returned and you are not to find yourself in the same room as him under any circumstances."

Harry's mind span out a few theories as to where the Dark Lord was going with this line of thinking, jarring after a time on one annoying, obvious realisation. "You are sending me back to Hogwarts?"

"It is a possibility. For now, you will be out of the country for most of this summer anyway, consequently the secret will not be too difficult to keep."

"If I may ask, where am I going and what do you need me to do?"

"After a week to cement my position and gather some fresh recruits, you will travel to northeastern Europe and make contact with the Giant tribes."

"I get to negotiate with Giants?" Harry asked with a grin, "Damn V, how cool is that!"

He ducked, the lightning fast Cruciatus missed him by a hair, and winking Harry fled from the room.

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	2. Belarus I'm no Goose

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Choose: the rest is in the details  
>by Lens of Sanity<p>

','

Chapter Two: Belarus I'm no Goose

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Humping his way through a wide open promenade in the former Soviet city of Minsk, practically knocking on the front door of Russian Hit-Wizards, Harry was doing his level best to ignore the growing headache which was beginning to pound through the backs of his eyes. The stupid meditation exercises were bad enough on their own to cause this kind of discomfort, but the four other Death Eaters who were with him were not making things easier.

McNair refused point blank to put away that massive, and admittedly pretty cool looking, axe of his, even though they were in the middle of a Muggle City, doing their best to remain inconspicuous. He'd done as he was told eventually, although it had taken the threat of allowing Derrick to practice his Cruciatus on the executioner, and had since been sent off to go pick them up some lunch.

How in the hell it could be so bloody freezing cold when it was July Harry would never know, and he did his best to put the feeling out of his mind as he went back to practicing the cognisant meditation exercise. It had taken all of two hours to track down the method of learning his Animagus form, and he only had to wait overnight before someone came through with the Revealing Potion, which was why Harry was now fighting back a migraine that was a happy side effect of picturing oneself as a bird of prey.

The book he'd found informed him the first step in transforming was to put yourself 'in the shoes' of your inner animal so to speak, and that it was best to spend as much of your day trying to see the world in the way you would if you were already transformed. The hallucinogenic potion had offered him a bewildering vision of flight, where he'd been with another bird diving toward a jackrabbit, slaughtering the cute little animal with his talons. This was the only reason it even seemed possible to picture himself as something other than human, and additionally the reason Harry had spent so much of the previous week in Britain reading about Harris Hawks.

At least having a cool animal form made up for the pounding headache.

It helped explain why he was such a natural on a broom too.

Other than McNair and his axe, Peregrine Derrick was with him, a Slytherin on their Quidditch team Harry remembered playing against a few times when he was younger. As far as he could work out the guy had just finished his seventh year at Hogwarts a couple of days ago, so even though he was technically a fully qualified wizard Harry was a little surprised to find him accepted as one of the new recruits. Derrick was alright, even if he'd pointed out that the man with jet black eyes and shoulder length grey hair was clearly Harry Potter, about twenty seconds after being introduced to his team leader.

Harry's metamorphed, colour tinted disguise was good at a glance, but not for someone who'd met him in person apparently. Fuck it, them's the breaks.

The final two members of his team were another one of the Inner Circle who'd been at the graveyard, an older man whose first name Harry didn't know called Mr. Nott, and the man's son Theo. Now if Derrick was technically old enough to become a Death Eater, a kid from Harry's Potions class certainly wasn't, barely fifteen years old and not even having sat his O.W.L.s. yet.

Mentioning this fact to the Dark Lord right before they'd left was met with an eyebrow raise and no comment. Voldemort had personally removed the Trace from both the teenagers' wands and person during the same meeting, and so far the kid hadn't gotten in the way.

McNair made his way over to Harry and parcelled out whatever he'd managed to scrounge up. A short time later the senior Nott returned from his foray deeper into the city, presumably having completed his meeting with whatever contact they'd come here to meet. The older man had a hastily healed slash running down the left side of his face and seemed to be limping a little on his right side.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" Harry asked.

Nott Sr. let his hand brush against the ridge of his cut absently, without access to a mirror he'd probably believed the thing to have been invisible. "I got into a disagreement with the vampire I had agreed to meet."

"Are you going to be alright?"

"It is a scratch Harry Potter. I would also like to point out you are not actually my mother."

"You guys all sorted then?" Harry decided not to comment further, all the while going to tremendous effort not to visibly show his amusement. There were a few nods from the small group indicating they were indeed ready to go, and he finished, "Let's get on with it then."

* * *

><p>"<em>If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."<em>

* * *

><p>"I think this is far enough for one day," Harry said. The place was all up and down, boulders the size of griffins, and torturous forest land which needed to be trudged through. Getting to the damn Giants was not something you could just grab a Portkey for and be there in an instant, no you had to travel using your own feet, not even able to fly a broom because of the outside chance of mountaineering Muggles spotting you without you spotting them.<p>

"Are we nearly there yet?"

'McNair, I swear to gods if I didn't need you to translate I would kill you and bury your corpse out here where no-one will ever find it,' Harry conspicuously refrained from saying.

"Tomorrow, or more likely the morning after," Mr. Nott replied. He must have picked up some of Harry's unvoiced sentiment though, because he was looking at the other man like he was an idiot.

Half an hour later Harry was lounging in the larger of the two wizard tents, feet up, with the book Voldemort had given him open on his knees. Flipping through the manual it struck him, as it did every time he read it, that Professor Quirrell really should have been the greatest Defence Professor in the history of Hogwarts. The book had been written during the late fifties or early sixties as far as Harry could tell, and it contained simple to understand instructions for some of the combative magic the Dark Lord had learned on his extensive journeys around the world.

Lots of the curses were pretty horrible things to read about, but Harry surprised himself because he knew some of them already. The Organ Shredding Jinx for instance had been researched during his preparation for the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and hadn't even been in the restricted section of the school library. Nevertheless, Voldemort's description of the correct method of casting was so much more intuitive, and made far more sense than the garbled explanation written in that sixteenth century tome in which Harry found it.

The manual didn't even have a title, and from the big deal everyone made of Harry being offered Lucius Malfoy's personal copy, he concluded there weren't all that many kicking around the world, making it both rare and undoubtedly valuable. It contained more than just a list of spells and incantations of course, the book was intended as a basis for all Death Eater training, back in the early days of Lord Voldemort's rise, at a time when he was still regularly training his soldiers personally, rather than leaving the job to subordinates.

From comments overheard the last person Voldemort had instructed one-on-one had been Bellatrix Black, the psychopath currently residing in Azkaban for what she'd done to Longbottom's parents, and was widely considered the most dangerous Death Eater to have ever been in the Dark Lord's ranks.

"Until I joined anyway," Harry whispered his aspiration to himself.

"What was that Harry?"

"Hmm?" He looked up from the description he'd read most often and most thoroughly. "Say again Theo."

"I asked what you were reading," Harry's former classmate Theo Nott, asked from across the moderately sized tent room.

"Oh, it's the Imperius Curse description," Harry told him. "I managed to land it successful on that Crouch guy, but according to the book it shouldn't have worked at all."

Theodore Nott had been acting guarded but not overly hostile toward him since Harry had met him, begun nicknaming him Theo reflexively, and had joined their little expedition. The group had been making their way steadily up the mountainside all day, hardly talking, and other than Animagus exercises this left Harry a lot of time to think. As he'd never been stupid in his life, lazy sometimes, but not slow on the uptake when he applied himself, Harry pointed his brain toward the fifteen year old's presence.

He came to the conclusion that it was the boy's father, Nott Senior, who'd pushed him into taking the Dark Mark at such a young age. On further inspection of this idea Harry decided the reason for this was to ingratiate his son, not with Voldemort, but with Harry himself. If he was right in this estimation, Nott Sr. was acting in a particularly Slytherin manner, gambling on the Harry's obviously rising star to propel his son into a position above the rank and file.

The higher up in the organisation a person was, the less likely they were to be mere cannon fodder for the Dark Lord's plans, and if he waited until after graduating it would be too late to latch onto Harry's success.

So Theo had likely been told to make friends if possible, and Harry was guessing this was the main purpose to his question. He got bonus points for his method because Harry knew from all that Boy-Who-Lived bullshit what toadies and hangers on acted like, and Theo just wasn't giving him that vibe at all.

"I am decent enough at the Imperius," Theo told him, "it's my Killing Curse which only works around one time in three."

"Yeah?" came Harry's reply. "Well when I hit Crouch I didn't even enunciate the incantation properly, nor did I perform the six wandmotions because I didn't know them. Nevertheless I managed to successfully cast an Imperius Curse powerful enough to keep a moderately talented Death Eater under the effects for a couple of days."

"Okay," Theo said slowly.

"Impossible right?"

"I would have thought so."

"Read that and tell me what I was doing right which allowed it to work against Crouch." Harry threw the book carefully onto the cushioned seat.

Harry crossed his ankles and stretched out, watching the other guy's expression with interest. Theo read through the Dark Lord's description of the curse in question, the method of casting, and the theory as to how and why it worked. When his eyes stopped moving they did not come away from the page, Harry got the impression he was thinking though the logic of the situation, and after a time seemed to come to a conclusion.

"Let's hear it then," Harry prompted.

"I could be simply that you are so powerful both Albus Dumbledore and the Dark Lord should cower at the mere prospect of being in your presence," Theo deadpanned. "However I think I'm going to throw that theory out for the time being."

"Right."

"I am guessing the lasting commands you left Crouch with after leaving his presence, were probably things he wanted to do anyway. Meaning at a deep level the man did not have near enough willpower to fight his own desires."

"Correct, I didn't realise until I read the passage, but I was using such a method instinctively at the time," Harry confirmed. "Imagine Dumbledore's face if he found out what an intuitive grasp of Dark Magic I seem to have. Anyway, that doesn't answer how the spell was even successful in the first place, the question whose whole answer is reason I keep re-reading that page."

"It is a subject of dominance," Nott Sr. informed them, now standing in the doorway of the tent. Harry waved for him to continue, this had been bugging the crap out of him all week. "Good casters of that curse are predisposed to wishing their dominance over other people, and can therefore effortlessly squash the will of others when using it. However if your Imperius Curse worked in the way you described you must have cast it in the same manner as the Dark Lord himself."

Harry tilted his head, mulling this over, eager to learn as always. "Please go on."

"I would bet serious Galleons you were not thinking of young Crouch as a person at all when you cursed him. Instead your intent saw him more as an extension of yourself, as an arm or a foot, not alive in the same way as a human or sentient magical creature," the elder Nott explained. "This was how the spell was taught to me by the Dark Lord back in my Hogwarts days."

Harry blinked a while and thought this through. It made a kind of sense actually, now he thought on it. Crouch had kept Obliviating him over the year, and when it finally came time to put his plan into action, the 'Fake Moody' whose identity he still didn't know, was labelled 'an enemy' and not 'a person' in his mind.

"You would have won your bet Mr. Nott," Harry told him with a grin. "I'll swap you another tip for teaching your son how and where he is going wrong with the Killing Curse."

They got less than four and a half hours sleep that night, discussing magic rather than resting, but in Harry's opinion it was time well spent.

* * *

><p><em>"Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it."<em>

_I asked for help you old bastard. Help is all I ever wanted._

_Well fuck you. I'm getting more help than I can handle now. And gods save your withered bones._

* * *

><p>They once again topped the final climb two sunrises later, having reached the summit late the previous evening and deciding an approach during the day, to be a far more intelligent course of action. For one thing Harry was getting sick of talking about Quidditch, on the plus side Derrick held the same low opinion of the Chudley Cannons as Harry, but he just would not hear a word against Kenmare despite their recent crushing defeat at the hands of the Magpies.<p>

"Toss me my Omnioculars," Harry ordered without looking round. When handed a large pair of brass lenses surrounded by a bunch of knobs and dials Harry scowled at them before finally turning, "I said hand me mine you idiot."

"They are yours," McNair whined.

"Mine have 'VK' carved into the side as you well know."

"Fine." He swapped the two devises and handed Harry his correct pair, the ones he'd gotten Krum to inscribe for him after the World Cup.

Harry swept his magnified gaze across the valley slowly, taking in the massive Giant bodies which looked at first glance to be part of the mountain themselves, some of the lumbering humanoids probably topping twenty feet tall. Most of the European Giant population had been poached, slaughtered, and outright exterminated over the last two hundred or so years, worse following the end of the last war because so many of them had sided with Voldemort.

This valley in northeastern Belarus, between four high mountains, was where they had been forced to take residence, a bare eighty or so by Harry's reckoning. As he swung the Omnioculars down toward the mountain lake, off to the south side Harry noticed something irritating if not unexpected.

"Phoenixes," He spoke aloud. "Talking to the Bull and what is probably his wife."

"One of them is that Hagrid," McNair confirmed, after Harry waved over in the general direction for him. "That bastard freed a hippogriff I was supposed to chop in half for the Ministry," the man bemoaned his lost opportunity.

With a smirk Harry corrected this assumption, "Actually, that wasn't Hagrid, it was me."

"What?"

"Yeah, I was trying to free Black before Fudge gave the order for him to be given the Dementor's Kiss," he expanded in explanation. "You should have seen your face when Buckbeak got away, you looked so angry it was classic."

"Do you know who that is with him?" Nott asked.

"Yeah, that's Remus Lupin," Harry told the group. "He's a Werewolf and apparently pretty decent with a wand."

"That's Professor Lupin, Harry?" Theo asked, once more taking a look through the second pair of Omnis, "are you sure?"

"I knew him pretty well and you can tell from the way he is standing."

"What in the name of Merlin are they thinking by sending a Half-Giant to negotiate with Giants?" McNair asked incredulously, "they'll treat him like a runt at best."

"Hagrid's a Half-Giant?" Harry exploded in surprise. When everyone looked at him like he was an idiot he thought it through. "That actually makes sense now I say it out loud."

"Mudblood," McNair muttered.

"Shut the fuck up or I'll rip off one of your arms," he threatened. "And I was in fact raised by filthy fucking Muggles so give me a break."

The small group sat back and watched the two members of the Order of the Phoenix. While they couldn't hear what was being said it was pretty easy to guess, the biggest Giant was centre of attention, and one of the others seemed to be acting as a translator, after a long few minutes Lupin handed over a massive medieval looking helmet which was likely imbued with all sorts of magic and enchantments. It took them nearly an hour to conduct their conversation with the magical creature, easily seven meters at a shoulder.

"They're offering gifts," McNair spoke for the fourth or fifth time.

"It's Dumbledore, he really has absolutely no idea what he's doing," Harry answered finally. "Do you have any likely replacement Gurg in mind?"

It was only the two of them left, the other three having gone back to the tents when it became obvious they were just going to watch. The muscular man ran his finger though that ridiculous black moustache of his before pointing off to the middle distance, between the current Gurg and the easternmost mountain. Swinging the Krum carved Omnis to the Giant in question, Harry took his time assessing the potential, maybe three or four feet taller than the other Giant and surrounded by three others in a small group, two of which Harry would tentatively describe as females.

"He'll do," Harry agreed. "Let's get some lunch before going down there."

There was a grunt which he'd take for a response, and the two made their way back to the tent.

','

"All I am saying Mr. Golgomath is that I strongly doubt you would even stand a chance against Gurg Karkus," McNair translated his words, with body facing Harry, not the Giant. He was taking the extra precaution of wearing his Death Eater mask for the first time, having been told by Voldemort that he wasn't to be recognised, Lupin surely being able to recognise his face well enough to see through the same disguise, Derrick had managed it after all.

Harry decided at that instant he needed to learn more Cosmetic Charms, the long tinted hair was too good not to use, all he needed was a simple way to alter his perceived face shape and he'd be laughing. Besides, he really hated wearing a bloody mask, it was undignified.

Anyway, the twenty five foot Giant roared at Harry's challenge, raising his club high in the air as if to strike at the tiny humans. "You are weak and not worthy to fight with us," Harry spoke beneath a _Sonorus_ in English, turning his back on the enraged creature with contempt.

He noticed the worried look on the face of Nott Senior, but couldn't see Derrick or Theo's reactions because they too were wearing masks. When the words were hastily translated, Golgomath's club halted, failing to descend upon them, no longer aiming for the group's destruction.

Predictable animals. They were all dominance, intimidation, and surprisingly for such stupid creatures; pride. Pride in their physical strength, that was something they could count on, and Harry's gamble was undoubtedly going to pay off. "Heh, I'm good," he whispered.

Next morning the five of them were once again on the same ridge, looking down across the valley using the pair of Omnioculars, watching as shit hit the fan for the duo of Phoenixes. Hagrid got himself snatched into the air by a helmeted, newly minted Gurg Golgomath, and the colossal Giant appeared to be attempting to pull his arm and legs off. Lupin managed some spry wandwork, clouting the creature across the side of the head, causing him to drop the Half-Giant to the deck.

There was a brief chase and Harry lost a bet when Hagrid got himself sideswiped by a frisky female, dainty at barely seventeen feet. It was over before it began really, and by early afternoon the five of them were approaching the new Gurg.

Harry got his second close look at Golgomath, the creature had coarse black hair and rotten teeth which smelled filthy. Wearing the helm taken from his predecessor and adorned with bones McNair assured him were human, Golgomath looked pretty damn pleased with himself. Now it was time to show the world the right way to deal with these creatures, beyond foolish gift giving, and pandering.

"I was impressed by how you slew Karkus, you are indeed both strong and powerful," Harry's voice bellowed, magically enhanced. McNair was translating again, all the while making it clear who was really speaking, thanks to the man's in-turned stance. Besides he'd been incredibly verbose in his objection of Harry's chosen course of action, as it was not something he'd be stupid enough to do himself, even though he was carrying the gigantic axe as he translated.

"Do you believe you are strong enough to fight me?"

That got Golgomath's attention. Voldemort had told him the Giants respected nothing but power and strength, though they could be convinced to join him with promises of battle and killing, increased freedom, and the opportunity to act more in line with their core instincts. From this, Harry came to the conclusion that if he simply beat the leader to a bloody pulp, _then_ offered him all the other stuff afterwards, things would be far more straightforward.

"I am going to take the pretty fire away from you," he taunted with a big old smile. When Harry had been told what Gubraithian Fire was, he'd decided he wanted it more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life, so here's hoping the Gurg wasn't the possessive type.

* * *

><p><em>I was armed with my wand, nothing more than a narrow strip of wood, against a fifty foot high, scaly, spike ridden, fire breathing dragon.<em>

_It's probably my overactive imagination, nothing more…_

_But some days, some days I get the feeling I was born for this kind of thing, to be the kind of man who's right at home on some ancient battlefield, swinging an axe into somebody's face._

_Heh, I wonder what Dudley would say to that?_

* * *

><p>Harry took a massive toe punt to the gut and went flying easily ten feet into the air. That hurt. It hurt a lot. But Giants were nowhere near as dangerous as Dragons, and Dragons were nothing new to the teenager. The cheep armour he'd been wearing bent into uselessness from the savagery of the blow, and Harry noticed the other four Death Eaters scatter off to the side, following orders not to help him.<p>

"Come on then mother fucker," he spat, levering himself back to his feet. _"Confringo!"_ sent one of his new spells at the humanoid, a high level blasting curse he'd despaired of ever learning last year. The bluish purple light connected high on Golgomath's shoulder, detonating with a fiery explosion.

With an unintelligible roar, probably some mangling of an eastern European language, the Giant shrugged off the curse as though it was noting, showing no visible damage, much to Harry's chagrin. If he pulled this off it was going to be awesome.

With a leaping jump Golgomath's club came down with horrifying speed, and as his armour was already toast he decided being hit by the thing was likely a bad plan. So the idea then became to not get hit even once. He barely managed a diving roll out of the clubs path, but did not anticipate the vicious sideswipe along the deck…

"_Protego."_ A transparent blue magical shield, the one which was on the O.W.L. syllabus, predictably cracked the instant it came into contact with the Giant's weapon. Luckily it took enough of the force to propel Harry high into the air once again, hopefully without liquefying his organs as it did so. He only knew two other shields, _Contego_ and the longer incanted version of the one he cast, neither of which would have coalesced fast enough to keep him alive.

"_Confringo."_ Good, that one hit him hard on the jaw, dazing him for a fraction of a second. Long enough to try a slower spell, one well proven to be the bane of an Acromantula's life if the dead spider from the Third Task was anything to go by… Jab, jab, and crosshatch, _"Bombarda Maxima!"_

The magical equivalent of a right cross, haymaker combination shot to the jaw, Golgomath was hurting but not on the mat quite yet.

Was it weird he was having so much fun?

The creature weighed more than a couple of bull elephants and had skin tougher than a rhinoceros hide, and hearing it bellow a language he couldn't understand, but could keep up with the gist of swearing in any language, Harry should have been terrified rather than jazzed up.

Fifteen minutes later Harry grinned a blood splattered, toothless smile, as he climbed onto the fallen Giant's chest. It had eventually taken a sneaky nonstandard application of the _Incarcerous_ Transfiguration to tie up the Gurg's legs. Harry had been forced to run between them, risking a lethal boot stomping, but once on the ground repeatedly well-targeted blasters to the head knocked him unconscious. After which, all that was left was to tie the massive body down, and climb aboard.

"Oh yeah, one more thing," Harry began a little unsteadily. _"Accio 'Branch of Gubraithian Fire.'"_

He caught the branch of everlasting flames in his left hand and limped his way over to Golgomath's head, careful of his conjured ropes, and his assorted injuries. A second _Incarcerous_ around the neck and Harry pointed his holly wand between his defeated rival's eyes, _"Ennervate."_

A stone grey eye bigger than his head flickered open and the Giant returned to consciousness, struggling to fight its bounds, glaring murderously at the tiny human which was grinning at it. Harry raised his wand and charged a spell, tip glowing a hue of poisonous purple with the magic just hanging there, threatening but still safe, and the crazy teenager offering Golgomath a big cheeky smile. "You lose sweetheart."

Obviously the powerful magical creature could not understand the words, but he clearly noted the Gubraithian Fire, his position, and not to mention the tone.

With a barking gravelly sound the Gurg began to laugh.

* * *

><p>"<em>A child's voice, however honest and true, is meaningless to those who've forgotten how to listen."<em>

_I should probably angst at this, I really should… Whatever, at least know this, it will save me the effort of the other; I hate you._

_I do, and once you grasp that, I've nothing more to add._

* * *

><p>It was mid July when the elder Nott walked into the room in which the Dark Lord had appropriated, the friend he'd known all those years ago in Slytherin would have been unrecognisable as the same figure who he came to speak with, a decidedly demonic air forever present, serpentine and dangerous.<p>

"Well?" Voldemort asked.

"I believe young Mister Potter was aware his mission was a test My Lord," the elderly man spoke formally, although this was mostly unnecessary for those who'd been in the organisation for as long as he had. "He reports that forty five Giants will be in Britain by the beginning of next month."

"Any losses?"

"No," Nott answered. "I must admit to being impressed despite myself, it was… a singularly unusual experience."

"May I see?" Voldemort asked, although it wasn't really a question. The older man locked eyes with the Dark Lord and immediately found himself forcibly recalling the events of a week and a half prior, a barely pubescent child walking tall, badmouthing a Giant, and beating he thing to the edge of sensibility. "I agree," the red eyed man hissed in approval.

"My Lord?" Nott asked in confusion.

"Your assertion of the boy as a 'younger, more insufferable, version of me,'" Voldemort clarified with a twisted smile. "We shall have to discover the full contents of our Prophecy, Harry and I, for I see far too many parallels in your mind."

"Harry Potter was surprisingly respectful," Nott began, "not just to me, but toward you my Lord."

"How so?"

"He offered no silly nicknames when away from your presence, naming you as Voldemort or as chosen title of Lord. And I believe he will only do otherwise in your presence."

"Interesting." From the throne Voldemort had transfigured, he steepled his spiderlike fingers, lost in thought, clinging to the silence for lasing seconds. "How goes his search for Animagus magic."

With a half smile the Inner Circle member answered, "I have been ordered to search out an Animage for Harry to learn from, as soon as I finish reporting to you. To use his words, apparently 'it is a shame he murdered Pettigrew.'" The smirk on his face was blatant by this point.

Slitted nostrils blew out a laugh, "You are to follow that instruction of course. We attack Azkaban before the end of August and I have hopes Harry Potter will be at our side when we do so, hopefully using the gain for which learning such a skill is so important."

A short time later Mr. Nott was waved off, passing Severus Snape in the hallway it occurred to him, not for the first time, that the boy would soon need to be taught Occlumency. It was amusing the glaring lack of mental focus Harry had, and how he constantly blared his innermost thoughts and feelings to any practicing Legilimens.

For one thing, Harry truly believed the Dark Lord to be unaware of some of his long term goals.

The idea itself was clearly ludicrous.

With a peculiar smile Nott Sr. went in search of an Animagus.

','

Lens of Sanity  
>Harry powering an AK using his feelings for the coat rail was inspired by Sly Goddess, and I believe the Death Eater training manual may have come from Lionheart but I'm not too sure.<br>It's looking as though Tonks with a possible side order of Narcissa is more popular than my trying a blank slate pairing with Lisa Turpin. I can make Tonks a Death Eater fairly easily, but getting the seduction believable will be more problematic.

Any suggestions?


	3. Where the Heart Is

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**Announcement: **This piece of FanFiction has characters and situations you are encouraged to use as a basis for your own morality. Remember kids evil is fun, murdering people and stealing their things is cool, and you should smoke because cigarettes clean your lungs.

','

Choose: The rest is in the details  
>by Lens of Sanity<p>

','

Chapter Three: Where the Heart Is

','

Feeling a deep tissue pain hex on the back of his outstretched hand, Golgomath flinched, tucking the carriage sized extremity under his other arm. It was probably the equivalent to a human being hit with a mild stinging hex, annoying but not harmful, hell the only reason Harry had won their little wizard/creature honour bout was by tripping him and sending like forty point blank blasters into his jaw until the Gurg lost consciousness.

Brows knitted the Giant looked to be contemplating violence when Harry waved for him to wait a few moments, and, walking confidently toward the bovine Golgomath had been attempting to grasp, the young Death Eater tried out his new spell:

_"Kaio."_

The cow went up in purple flames, not a simple burning curse which attacked its target externally, instead this flame spell burned from the inside out, and when used on living beef, produced nothing short of a mouth watering aroma.

"Knock yourself out Gee, you Giant guys don't eat enough cooked food if you ask me," Harry said, the English still unintelligible to the creature, but the gestures made communication at least sort of possible. Golgomath ripped off the hind leg of his meal and shoved the still smouldering meat into his mouth, and as the guy had marginally better table manners than Ron Weasley, offered a sight which barely made him turn green at all.

After a few seconds of contemplation the Giant let out the grunting syllables Harry had learned to identify as approval, and leaving him to his meal, Harry returned to the campsite. When he got to the table where his team was sitting around eating, Harry ignored the hate filled glare McNair was offering him and sat across from Theo, taking an offered plate of whatever the hell they were having for lunch. Diagnostics showed it to be clean of poison and he took a few idle minutes to simply enjoy his food.

It was coming on late July now and the temperature in the German countryside was torturous at best, cloudless sky and sun beating down on them relentlessly throughout the day. It was getting on for evening and the heat was finally beginning to loosen its hold on them, so they could at least relax for a while before Harry called it a night. By his estimation they were ahead of schedule, herding the massive magical creatures through some annoyingly populated areas was not as simple as one might think, even with wand and wards aiding their journey.

A woman, probably in her late fifties if Harry had been impolite enough to ask, sat herself beside him, offering a small smile of greeting. This was the Animage Nott Sr. had returned with after Harry sent him back to the Dark Lord. She was not in actual fact a Death Eater at all, simply an old friend of one of the new Inner Circle members Harry had yet to meet.

The saucy squirrel Animagus was also the reason for which McNair was glaring at him.

"Okay, what happened?" Theo asked eventually. Harry liked him, once he'd gotten past the whole Slytherin thing, and he acknowledged the fact Draco Malfoy was a stupid dickless fuck, the guy turned out to have a cutting and sarcastic sense of humour.

"What makes you think something happened?" Harry asked innocently. "Furthermore I have no idea what you mean, nor do I understand your insinuations."

"Mr. McNair has been scowling at you and twitching for his wand all day," the slightly built teenager pointed out. "Something happened last night."

With a huff Walden McNair, the man in question, threw down his food and stalked away with a scowl. As soon as the executioner was out of sight the woman beside Harry let out a giggle, a no shit _giggle_, as she tried to pull herself back together.

"You are not very good at keeping secrets," Harry told her with a sigh. "Because she is only woman here McNair seemed to be under the impression that she was obligated to do some stuff for him…" After a pause where Theo nodded his understanding he finished, "and when I caught him, I disagreed with the sentiment."

"So what? You Cruciated him or something?"

"No, I'm actually quite pathetic at casting that particular Unforgivable."

"So…" Theo began leadingly.

"So I expressed my disapproval using the Imperius Curse instead."

Theo paused for a short time of introspection. The implications of what an Imperius Curse could be used for in place of torture took the full meal to settle on Theodore Nott, and worse was the fact he couldn't quite grasp the limits of what sadistic shit Harry might have forced the other Death Eater to do as punishment. When the other two were about to leave he asked, "Are you going to tell me what happened or not?"

"You can ask _Walden_ if you like, but I doubt he'll tell you." Turning to his Animagus instructor he changed the subject, "What are you having me do this tonight then?"

The middle aged woman gave him another smile, "Since you can't get the partial transfigurations down, I would like you to attempt a method my instructor first advised me to use."

"Hmm?" Harry asked, as the two moved over into a clearing to practice once again.

"I am going to transfigure you into a Harris Hawk, and you are going to catch a rabbit with your talons before I let you attempt to change back on your own."

As the band of transfiguration magic raced toward him, Harry managed a weak, "This is going to hurt isn't it?"

It did. On finally being successful and returning to human form under his own power, Harry suffered from what he'd taken to calling a 'birdbrain hangover.' It lasted three full days, at the end of which Harry wasn't certain learning was worth it after all.

* * *

><p><em>It was the most wonderful feeling, a floating sensation as every thought and worry in my head was wiped gently away, leaving nothing but a vague, untraceable happiness.<em>

_Of course that was sort of a giveaway. Untraceable happiness? The feeling I could give up control and trust someone __**else**__ to solve my problems? I snapped that fucker like a Sphinx neck._

* * *

><p>"<em>Contego!"<em> After sidestepping McNair's initial Killing Curse, Harry raised his secondary shield. _Protego_, his primary, was a magical barrier on more or less the same level, and he found it to be far more effective in defending against direct magical assault, whereas this shield was a touch slower casting but considerably better at protecting him from solid attacks.

So if someone was firing a Bludgeoning Curse at him, he'd go with one shield, but if an attacker tried to banish a rock or something, and bludgeon him with _that_, he'd go with the shield he cast. McNair followed up his off target _Avada Kedavra_ with a flight of arrows and so Harry easily took the hit on his swiftly raised _Contego_ barrier.

What he didn't count on was the near reflexive Cruciatus the old man sent his way, off target as it was Harry had the misfortune to dodge _into_ the curse's path, dropping him to the floor with a scream. Not good. Nevertheless McNair was nowhere near as proficient with that spell as the Dark Lord, and he managed after the longest time in creation to crack open his eyes, through the agony and tears getting a blurry idea of where his attacker was standing.

"_Imperio!"_ Harry choked out, and while the pain didn't immediately lessen, the man's eyes did eventually glaze over as they had the previous evening. _'Punch yourself in the balls as hard as you can.'_ McNair obeyed instantly and, getting to his feet, Harry loosed the curse's hold on him. "I advise against attacking me ever again," the displeased teenager whispered to him quietly.

He glared down impassively as McNair rolled around on the deck, clutching his groin, attempting to muffle the aching little whimpers. After a short while McNair managed a few threatening words of his own, to which the teenager replied, "You attempted to rape a member of my team. I do not care what you get up to on your own time, however the woman was sent here to teach me, _not_ to service you. The only reason I didn't introduce you to my Killing Curse is because I intend to get back to England without a single lost Death Eater."

When McNair did not reply, instead choosing to scowl pathetically at him for a time, he simply rolled his green eyes and turned his back on the downed opponent. Harry supposed he wouldn't be particularly charitable to someone who used the Imperious Curse on him in the way he had, but then again Harry seemed to be immune to the curse, so it was not like he would ever find out.

Theo rounded on him ten minutes later after he'd returned to his tent. "I think you are making a mistake with regards to Mr. McNair."

"Yeah?" Harry asked, "How so?"

"You let him off too easily. He fired a Killing Curse at you for Frigg's sake!" he shouted.

"But he didn't connect it," Harry pointed out. "Wait, you were following me? Were you worried or something?"

"You are an idiot."

"Sure."

"The man is an old school Death Eater, he's not just going to forget about whatever you did to him," Theo pointed out patiently.

"If he tries anything else I'll Imperius him into confess his love for Minister Scrimgeour's daughter or something," Harry told him, the course of action being the first thing to spring to mind. Seeing the other teenage Death Eater turning a little green for some reason Harry asked, "What?"

"Nevermind," Theo said weakly, he really didn't want to get into how unattractive the girl in question was. "Have you read the Prophet yet? One of the Elves delivered it earlier on."

Two weeks previously Bartemius Crouch, father of the fool who'd been impersonating Mad-Eye Moody all last year, had come forward and confessed his sins to the Wizarding world. This was not good from their point of view, as the Dark Lord seemed to have several plans in place which necessitated few people being aware of his rebirth for the time being, uncertainty and misdirection were great tools for the Death Eaters, allowing them to move with more freedom.

With the former Head of International Magical Cooperation shouting to everyone who would listen that his son was alive, a Death Eater, and absolutely convinced his 'Master' would soon be alive, the Magical community had unfortunately rallied behind Dumbledore. The old man having used a call to arms, uniting everyone he could to his cause, under the guise of a frenzied search for Harry Potter.

This was all a damn shame, especially as one of his most manic supporters was a man Harry had met only once by the name of Amos Diggory, Head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, another big name in the Ministry. The tumult caused by Crouch Sr. had ousted the fool Fudge almost instantly, losing their side a great deal of influence within the British Government, and worst of all, the widespread belief that Voldemort was indeed alive.

"What does the paper say Theo?" He asked in response, to the guy Harry would tentatively describe as his friend… until the inevitable betrayal of course.

Bartemius Crouch Reappointed Head of the Auror Office  
>by Rita Skeeter<p>

Given the man _should_ be a laughing stock this was probably not a good sign.

* * *

><p>"<em>They say old Mad-Eye's obsessed with catching Dark wizards, but he's nothing, nothing compared to Barty Crouch."<em>

_Yeah, bad sign. Troubling even._

* * *

><p>Harry walked into the Dark Lord's throne room with a confident swagger to his stride, the serpentine man of nigh infinite power took note of his presence but did not immediately look up from the tome he was reading. "Ah, Harry what a pleasant-," Voldemort's words jarred to a halt as he took in the appearance of one of his more entertaining Death Eaters, "is that a Tyrolean hat you are wearing?"<p>

"Yes it is my Lord," Harry replied with a pleased smile. "I was forced to go quite far out of my way to find one."

"Why, may I ask, are you wearing such a ridiculous thing?"

"Well isn't it obvious? It matches my eyes, and Bavarian hats are c-,"

"_Crucio!_"

Yeah, again, who'd have guessed?

"Not a hat fan Voldemort?" Harry managed after a the curse was lifted, he was getting better at smiling when under the effects, but being Cruciated still hurt like hell. "Anyway, I got the Giants here, let me tell you getting them across the English Channel on those barges was a bitch. I didn't know Giants couldn't use Portkeys by the way."

"Are the Giants…"

"Yes, they are safe and sound on the preserve I was directed to," Harry told him, effortlessly rolling his shoulder to avoid the 'do not interrupt me' curse. "Forty five, they are kicking back under their Gurg, just waiting for instructions."

Harry just stood there smiling with a kind of relaxed insolence, confident that he'd done better than expected, given the obviousness of how swiftly the Dark Lord expected him to fail his task, get killed while travelling by the Giants, or more likely murdered by one of the elder Death Eaters.

Harry also found the Cruciatus Curse was not nearly as bad as most people assumed it to be, yes it caused unimaginable pain, several orders of magnitude greater than giving birth while being kicked in the nuts, but so long as you accepted that and attempted not to thrash around too much, the lingering agony drained away pretty quickly. So Harry was grinning, despite the twenty second exposure, lingering damage, and the twitching he was trying his best to ignore. Somehow the teen got the impression Voldemort knew all of this, and for his own reasons letting Harry get away with it without comment.

"How goes your Animagus training Harry?" the man hissed.

"Slowly, I'm getting better when Transfigured, but am yet to transform on my own even once."

Clearly coming to a decision the seven foot figure with cold pale skin got to his feet. "Show me the curses you have mastered," he commanded.

Harry did so, casting as powerfully as he could each of the curses, hexes, and jinxes he'd mastered over the last six weeks. Organ Shredding, Bone Snappers, his two favourite Blasting Curses from the Tournament, and the equivalent Cutters he'd learned for the same contest. Obviously he neglected the Imperius, but now and again he'd attempt an _Avada Kedavra_, in between some of the Dark Arts he'd swindled one Death Eater or another into teaching him.

The Dark Lord would occasionally toss something back at him to keep things interesting, but for the most part Harry was simply exhausting himself casting, time and again, into Voldemort's shields. The bastard didn't even need to move, and after a short while went back to his book, seemingly not needing to apply even a token amount of attention to make Harry look like an idiot.

Predictably for anyone who'd been watching, Harry blacked out from magical exhaustion without coming close to landing a spell.

','

Anyone who had at one time or another in their life gotten so intoxicated on drugs or alcohol, they not only forgot where they lived, but the names or their closest friends and family, might have a comparable experience with which to compare Harry's state of mind on being shaken awake.

Comparable, but such an experience would not really come close. You see Harry had, for the first time in his relatively short life, channelled quite a large degree of Dark Magic in a single sitting, more in fact than he'd come close to performing at any point in his history. One of his newest spells which he'd learned so enthusiastically not four days previously was a Dark Arts Slashing Curse he'd been informed was called a 'Shadow's Glaive,' and once learning the incantation, wandmotions, and intent needed to cast it, had proceeded to add it to his spell repertoire.

Under normal circumstances this would be quite a standard thing to do, a given course of action when in possession of a new piece of combative magic. Unfortunately for the young Death Eater, the Shadow's Glaive was in actual fact the first moderate to high level bit of Dark Magic he had ever learned, and magic such as that, Dark Arts such as those, were _not the same_ as regular magic, they were _different_.

Harry did not know this at the time.

Harry in his youth, and even now it would still be possible to call it innocence, had believed the Dark Arts to simply be an offshoot of regular magic, labelled "Dark" by bureaucrats and fools, for no other reason than because they were more liable to cause harm than Ministry sanctioned spells.

The previous afternoon Harry had been ordered to display his new spell knowledge to the Dark Lord and, confident in the progress he'd made over the few short weeks, had gone all out ending in an introduction to the floor and magical exhaustion. He'd also cast his first moderate to high level piece of Dark Magic, the Shadow's Glaive, somewhere in the region of twenty five to thirty times over the course of about a quarter of an hour.

This was where any memory of a brutal hangover suddenly becomes important in understanding Harry's mental state as Theo Nott shook him awake thirty six hours later, because the mind cracking headache and horrid tastes in the mouth were the least of his problems.

"The donut people have stolen my eyes!" Harry screamed, throat already raw, presumably as he'd been bellowing similar things for hours at this point. His eyelids were firmly clamped shut, unmoveable hands wrapped around his head, and skull buried fixedly into his pillow.

'Some days being evil sucked.' He didn't think it as he had too many other problems, but eventually he would.

Two hours later his was still shaking, each joint and muscle ached as though he'd run back to back marathons, and clammy, unpleasant skin simply did not sit well with him. At least he'd stopped screaming, even if his appetite had yet to return. The downside was that fucking smug bastard Theo was making very little effort to restrain his amusement, eating a huge breakfast with unholy glee written clearly across his face.

Harry hated him very much.

"Stop grinning at me," he commanded in his best intimidating tone, failing quite blatantly to appear scary enough to frighten even a box of six year old Muggle children. "I've suffered from magical exhaustion before, it was nothing like that, what the hell happened?"

"That was the effects of Dark Arts abuse you stupid prick," the Slytherin informed him cheerfully. "We told you there was a difference and you just wouldn't listen."

"I don't want that to happen anymore!" He declared.

"Listen to people who actually know what they are talking about then," Theo said, shaking his head and taking a big bite of disgustingly greasy bacon. Changing the subject he asked, "Do you have anything planned for today?"

Harry did his best to ignore the oily, unclean feeling, as well as the unidentified buzzing in his ears, while he took a tentative bite at a small piece of fruit. Thinking over the question he came to a conclusion, something he'd been mulling over since he found out Lucius Malfoy had regained enough favour to be allowed back into his own bed, thereby displacing Harry from his rightful place.

"If you know anyone who's good at memory charms I can think of something productive to do now we're back in England."

For some reason Theo blanched at the happy smile Harry offered him.

* * *

><p><em>Home, I've always heard it's where the heart is…<em>

_My thinking, I remove the heart, and claim the home. It's that simple._

* * *

><p>'I just have to be working with Crouch again,' Harry though sourly. 'The stupid bastard will probably screw it up on purpose.' Trudging up the driveway of the fourth Manor House they'd visited today, Harry decided to just ask, "If I apologise for putting you under the Imperius Curse Barty, will you cut me some fucking slack?"<p>

"No."

"You're a twat you know that?"

"Harry please stop bickering," Theo pleaded. "Don't you still have a Dark Arts abuse headache?"

"Yeah but bickering helps me ignore it," Harry told him. Turning to the third Death Eater again he kept on regardless, "Barty mate, you didn't even do that badly with the whole Mad-Eye thing, can't we all just get along?"

"As soon as I can get away with it I am going to kill you and stick your corpse on a flagpole," the immature blond told him firmly. "I would not even be here if our Lord had not commanded it."

Knocking on the huge front door the three took their ease with varying levels of slouching and tiredness, they'd been Apparating all over the UK for hours and it was getting boring.

"Do you think the Dark Lord offered us Crouch for no other reason than to take the piss?" Theo aired his suspicions.

"I'd be fucking amazed if he did otherwise," Harry said. The man in question failed to even acknowledge they were talking about him, and so Harry addressed him pointedly, "You truly can cast a Fidelius Charm correct, you weren't simply blowing smoke?"

"Yes I can," Barty snapped, "the Master taught me enough to place one on the old Riddle House. Now please stop making talking noises."

The door eased open and an elderly Muggle man came to the door, eyed the three people wearing robes with a frown, and began to ask some pointless question or other; _"Imperio!"_ Harry incanted absently, before the mental command; _'You are very proud of your name and heritage. The three people at your door are an eager audience. You desire more than anything to tell them your full name.'_

"My name is Mills Edward Kettering, _Sir_ Mills Edward Kettering the Third to be precise."

"A pleasure to meet you Sir Kettering," Harry said brightly, commanding _'Perhaps these gentlemen would care for a drink?'_

"Would you like to come in, I was settling down to a fine single malt and you are welcome to join me," the stupid Muggle said, waving them in with a vacuous smile. Technically Harry did not need to bother phrasing the Imperius commands as if they were the target's own thought and ideas, but he was in the habit of doing it that way, and even though the Muggle didn't have magic to aid and resistance, he thought it best not to get sloppy.

The whiskey he was offered went a long way to ease Harry's throbbing head, and put him in a far more amiable mood.

And so Harry set about what he'd done on the last three locations, visiting rich arsehole Muggles, with more possessions, properties, and cash than they knew what to do with. Carefully asking questions about exactly who knew of the country house, visited regularly, and all the other information they would need to ensure that when the building vanished off the face of the earth, everyone who had detailed knowledge could be Obliviated at some point in the not too distant future.

It took three exhausting hours of work before Harry's job was done, the whiskey he'd been forcing through his low teenage alcohol tolerance was not making progress particularly fast going, ending eventually in a slurred order for the man, Sir Kettering, to go about and collect what few possessions they were leaving him with before memory charming him and sending the man to one of his other four homes.

At least that was his original idea before learning of Barty's ability to cast a Fidelius. Harry had initially thought that memory charms would be subtle enough to avoid throwing up big red flags to the Muggle Law Enforcement, and that stealing a building with magic was something the Aurors would probably investigate eventually. His companions disagreed.

"What?" Harry asked with surprise after he'd been called on his basic plan. "You're saying I should kill him?"

"He's just a Muggle, I don't see why you're going to so much effort," Theo said with a shrug.

"I dunno," he responded, the idea of murdering the guy did not really appeal to him for some reason.

"What's the problem?" Theo asked, "It's not like Muggles are real people."

"What do you mean, of course they're people, they just can't do magic."

"Now you're sounding like a Muggleborn again," Crouch put in, uncharacteristically joining in with the conversation.

"Yeah, I hate to agree with Barty but you've got to remember, Muggles don't become ghosts or have an afterlife or anything like that," Theo explained. "They're alive, but not in the same way as you or me, or even Mudbloods I suppose."

Harry actually stopped and thought about this for a while instead of just discarding the idea out of hand, with Kettering sitting vacantly nearby, still under his Imperius Curse. Thinking on the depths of human kindness shown to him by Muggles over the course of his short but eventful life, Harry supposed he wasn't exactly a prime example, and that just because he'd never seen the smallest spark of humanity from any of the non magical people he'd met, did _not_ mean it didn't exist. And then there was that thing about ghosts, it was kind of difficult to argue against something which is self evidently true.

"It still doesn't seem right though," Harry commented eventually. "I mean I've killed people before, but never like this; point, shoot, dead… it seems wrong."

"You're over thinking it," Theo told him, as Barty's Killing Curse struck the Muggle in the chest.

Harry was, unfortunately, still connected via Imperius when he did so.

','

It was probably a good thing that Harry was already pretty drunk when it happened, because there was a very good reason why witches and wizards avoid being linked to a person via Imperius Curse, or Legilimency had he known of the art, when the target loses its life. Not least of the side effects being that it made his headache worse.

With no pain relief potions on hand and Crouch suspiciously lacking in any ability of healing, Harry crawled away to find some dark corner in which to curl up with the remains of the Muggle's bottle of whiskey. If he just stayed still and pretended not to think about it he'd be fine. The bottle helped tremendously in that regard.

Theo was volunteered into helping Barty cast a Fidelius Charm on the new country house, as Harry curled up in an alcohol fuelled slumber. He really was kind of a lightweight and Barty had to be reminded a number of times not to do anything worse to him while he slept.

It was the middle of the night, closer to morning really, with Crouch having long since left and Theo having gotten bored poking around the crazy Muggle technology of indeterminate function, when an agonising spike of pain lanced through both Harry and his companions' forearms, waking the dark haired teen instantly. With the pain came knowledge of a location, and perfect understanding of their orders.

Voldemort needed them, and despite the shit shape he was in, Harry had to move.

* * *

><p>"<em>I'm sorry mate, are you okay?"<em>

"_Y-yeah, just a burn, no big deal…" he trails off looking at the snapped length of wood clutched in his scorched hand._

"_Are you sure?" I ask, seeing his despondent look._

"_It's just… it was my Dad's… Kind of had sentimental value you know?"_

"_I'm really sorry."_

* * *

><p>Harry Apperated to the coordinates as fast as he could, exhausted and aching from the multiple jumps he'd undergone throughout the previous day, his very bones protesting at the mistreatment he'd been putting the body still too young and ill equipped to deal with the transportation magic. Mask firmly in place over lengthened grey hair, glamour and dark eyes, Harry was given less than an instant to dive away from oncoming spellfire.<p>

Lighting up the rain speckled dimness of the alleyway in a bright flash of yellow, the force of the unknown spell pressed down on the cloaked teenager, doubtlessly malevolent intent bypassing his body by mere inches, leaving him safe to bring wand to the fore. Harry didn't see who or what had attacked him on reappearing behind The Ossuary, an ancient manor house, traditional seat of the Head of the Bones line, but he didn't pause before sending an Organ Shredder in the rough direction of Harry's attacker. He doubted the magic would hit home, sending the curse more as a shot from the hip while he evaluated his position and situation.

The small wall he'd been crouching behind cracked and vanished into debris, now useless as either cover or concealment and, somehow feeling a secondary attack was physical rather than magical, he choked out _'Contego,'_ taking banished or perhaps conjured hammers on his small magical shield. An indistinct figure in Auror robes swam into Harry's focus when he looked toward his opponent, twenty or so feet from where he was hunkered down. Standing in front of a second downed body, the Auror was fighting him all alone, with a backdrop of tremendous magic bearing down on them from somewhere off to the north.

_"Kaio,"_ Harry sent his burning curse after the thin Auror's spell flew past him, wide to the right. With a taunting voice he said, "You'll have to do better than that sunshine!"

Not knowing where the other Aurors were Harry scoped around as much as he could, trying to spot some of the other Death Eaters, but seeing none he went back to trying to take out whoever the guy in front of him happened to be. Alternating _Contego_ and _Protego_ spells, Harry was getting frustrated pretty quickly, noting as he fought that the shields always cracked after taking a single curse. Hell he took a big fat blasting curse to the chest and flew backwards into a shrubbery right as he noticed this problem, the offensive magic slamming straight through and taking him from his feet.

Rolling sideways to dodge another searing yellow spell Harry stuck with his Organ Shredder and inside out burning curse, the newer bit of fire magic he was most comfortable with, pairing well with last year's nasty little caress.

"Stop playing around you stupid bastard," Theo growled right after his Cruciatus flew at the Auror. "She'll beat you if you start taking the piss."

"Shu' it!" Harry slurred, still a little drunk from all the amber liquid he drank last night. Noticing Theo was talking up most of the Auror's attention, Harry took a moment to focus on the loving feelings he held for his old crossbeam, and after a short pause to gather the emotional intent whispered, _"Avada Kedavra!"_

The Auror, who was apparently female if Theo was to be believed, found herself banished powerfully by some unseen force, and Harry's Killing Curse, no longer streaking straight toward her, zoomed through the air she'd been occupying seconds before.

As Harry's focus swung toward a male voice he heard shouting a banisher, the south side of The Ossuary exploded in wood and shrapnel. The conclave of energy he'd been feeling far to the north was rapidly approaching and, through the now gaping south side of the Bones Ancestral Home, a huge gathering of Masked Death Eaters was trading shots with maybe twice their number of Aurors.

Noting the female Auror was getting to her feet and waving two young girls over to her downed partner, Harry and Theo paired up in an attempt to give what help they could to the other Death Eaters. It was chaos and Harry still had no idea what was going on, but one thing was for certain, there was a pissed off teenager between their position and the battle, and the magic he was sending at the two of them had unfettered rage fuelling it.

Whatever Voldemort had summoned them for, the two Death Eaters had a bigger problem to deal with, and that problem's name was Neville Longbottom.

','

Lens of Sanity  
>The <em>'Kiao'<em> spell was swiped from Mira Mirth … As for stealing a country house from a Muggle, it's never made much sense to me that a Death Eater who's perfectly happy to commit murder could _possibly_ live in squalor. For gods sake Snape lives in a tiny terraced house on Spinner's End! How much sense does that make when you could just Memory Charm someone and steal their shit?

As a final note I'd like to inform everyone that I'm probably bailing on the DLP Forum. Lots of their help was awesome so I've nothing but respect for those guys. Also there is a FanFiction on their WbA section which I'd never seen before, it's one of those 'top drawer' Bungle or NoFP quality stories I'd _**strongly**_ recommend titled 'Harry Potter: and the Boy Who Lived.' It's up to 4th Year and only available to readers who join the Forum, so I'd advise you get an account. For those who've already read it, I recently found a picture of Calypso Rosier and have posted it on _lensofsanity (dot) deviantart (dot) com_

As for Betaing I'd ask people reading this, who are interested in spell/grammar checking, AND who want pre-release copies of the chapters, let me know and I'll PM you when they're done…


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